Here is Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) informing a crowd that the federal government can do almost anything it wants, the U.S. Constitution be damned.

The crowd was none too happy to hear that American citizens are not free to engage in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as they see fit. No, instead of such trivialities, Rep. Stark says we are little more than pawns on a government-run chessboard who must obey any and all requirements placed upon us by our kings and queens. I rather thought we fought a Revolutionary War against ideas like Rep. Stark's, but I guess I could be mistaken. Maybe we are rewriting history about our founding in the same way that Rep. Stark would like to rewrite the Constitution. Maybe the Revolutionary War was about nothing more than a boatload of British tea, but I gather it was about much larger issues, such as liberty and self-determination.

I would write Rep. Stark off as a clueless nutball who could be ignored and laughed at, but he most certainly is not alone in his radical beliefs. The Democratic party is trumpeting the new "right" known as ObamaCare, and has no problem with the mandate requiring all American citizens to participate in this "right" or be fined/jailed. Apparently, most Democrats don't see the contradiction inherent in referring to something forced on the people by the government as a "right." The capacity to understand irony must be beyond them.

Leading the Democrats extremist charge of the "right" brigade to nullify the Constitution is none other than the Obama administration, which has taken to the court system to fight off challenges to it's regal omnipotence. Virginia, an upstart colony formerly known as a state, has claimed the ObamaCare mandate is unconstitutional. Lord Obama and his Superfriends sought to summarily dismiss the legal challenge of it's Virginia fiefdom, but a funny thing happened on the way to the quorum...a federal judge actually consulted the Constitution Of The United States, that musty old document these post-modern hipster Dems have no time for (I apologize for putting old Pete Stark anywhere near the phrase "post-modern hipster"). Go figure. A judge reading the Constitution. Maybe this could be the beginning of a trend. Here's what the judge said in his ruling:

In the opening salvo of the legal fight, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state's lawsuit, which argued the requirement that its residents must have health insurance is unconstitutional and conflicts with state law.

Hudson, who noted that his ruling was only an initial step, decided the issue the state raised -- whether forcing residents to buy something, namely healthcare, is constitutional -- had not been fully tested in court and was ripe for review.

"The congressional enactment under review -- the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision -- literally forges new ground and extends (the U.S. Constitution's) Commerce Clause powers beyond its current high watermark," Hudson said in a 32-page ruling.

By "forges new ground" and "extends the Commeric Clause powers," Judge Hudson is telling us that the Commerce Clause was never intended to be used for such a purpose as requring American citizens to purchase health insurance from a private company. There are no constitutional grounds to mandate Americans to purchase health private health insurance. Here's what the Commerce Clause actually says about the powers of the federal government:

"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes".

Regulating commerce means the government has powers to ensure commerice is equitable. The word "regulate" would have to be changed to "mandate" in the Commerce Clause in order to support ObamaCare. The Commerce Clause clearly doesn't say that.

It's so obvious that ObamaCare isn't supported by the Commerce Clause that left-wingers (and some right-wingers too), in order to justify their ongoing destruction of the Constitution, have taken to creating a second parallel Constitution out of whole cloth to replace the original one. In this parallel Constitution, the words of the Constitution mean something other than what they actually say. In the parallel Constitution, the words mean whatever the left-wingers want them to mean (and thus have no meaning at all). You'll know you're hearing about the actual Constitution when words like "originalist" are attached to it. You'll know you're hearing about the parallel Constitution that doesn't really exist when words like "living" and "evolving" are attached to it.

We could ignore and laugh at the advocates of the parallel Constitution just like we could laugh at the pathetic Rep. Stark, but we'd be making a grave mistake. Don't forget, the progressives and others have been progressively eating away at the original version of the Constitution for well over a century now, and they've achieved a great measure of success. Much of their unconstitutionality has legal precedent now, because judges have political ideologies too. We are getting dangerously close to Rep. Stark being correct, that the federal government can do whatever it wants to do, the Constitution be damned.

And anybody who isn't concerned about that is a fool of the first order.

Or a communist.

As the lady who questioned Pete Stark asked, if the government can get away with this, what can't they get away with ?